GROUP THERAPY

OUTCASTS ASSEMBLE! MARVEL'S MOST DYSFUNCTIONAL HEROES ARE HERE TO SAVE THE WORLD – AND MAYBE THEMSELVES - IN THUNDERBOLTS*

- NICK SETCHFIELD

AS ANYONE INVOLVED IN THE MCU discovers, there's an essential truth when it comes to comics fandom. Every title, every issue, every polybagged piece of paper history is a sacred text to somebody.

“I'm aware of people being like, ‘They didn't do the thing!’” smiles Jake Schreier, director of Thunderbolts*. “They didn't do the thing from the first one!”

Yes, Thunderbolts* doesn't just append a cryptic asterisk to Marvel's most morally dubious supergroup, this big-screen iteration dares to tell an altogether different origin story than the one enshrined on the comic book page and familiar to long-term fans. Gone is the key twist of a bunch of supervillains duping the world by masquerading as do-gooders, only to be exposed as the rascally Masters of Evil (that's the thing, by the way, not to be confused with the Thing, who definitely makes it to the screen in The Fantastic Four: First Steps this summer).

“We love those comics,” Schreier tells SFX, keen to reassure us that the tricksy spirit of that debut story is intact. “When people see the film they will see that [Marvel supremo] Kevin Feige's pretty smart about this stuff, and there's a way that we honoured that initial idea, that this team is not what you expect them to be.

“It's the idea of these morally grey characters, where theoretically they're villains but then they get to live what it's like to be a hero for a bit, and grapple with whether that is, in fact, enticing. That greyness is really where we found our connection. One thing that Kevin is good at is not just giving you what you expect, but taking the kernel of that idea and expanding it into something that feels different when it's in the MCU. I hope we've done that.”